The blog for Sean Buvala who is a professional, national storyteller, author, public-speaking coach and director of Storyteller.net. Grammar and spelling errors included for your own entertainment.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Special Enchanted Edition Podcast: A Storyteller Looks at the Enchanted Movie

What really would happen if fairy tale characters took the leap into our world? Would modern Americans be ready for all that darkness? The premise of Disney’s newest movie "Enchanted" gets a fresh look with Storyteller.net director and professional K. Sean Buvala in our latest edition of our podcast at storytellerpodcast.net.

Avondale, AZ November 18, 2007- "Fairy tales showing up in the middle of modern life? That’s not new. They’ve been there, in all their twisted goodness, since the beginning of humanity. Fairy tales have been making the leap into the ’modern world’ since human beings first experienced their imagination and understood the differences of good and evil," so says Sean Buvala, a full-time professional storyteller and director of the premier Internet storytelling site, Storyteller.net. And he ought to know. He’s been travelling the United States for more than 21 years sharing tales with adults, teens and children.

In the latest Podcast at Storyteller.net, Buvala discusses the role of darkness and challenge in fairy tales. "In the new Disney movie, ’Enchanted,’ the characters get trapped in modern day situations and the movie appears to ask the ’what if’ question. Stories, and fairy tales in particular, however, have been asking that same ’what if’ question for hundreds of years. What if we were confronted between the choices of morality, doing what is right and selfless behavior and the more appealing less sociable behaviors? These confrontations are the core of the meaning of fairy tales."

In a genre-busting premise, "Enchanted" puts the pure-love and doe-eyed behaviors of its main characters in the midst of our own seen-it-all society. However, Buvala says these calm, loving behaviors would be nearly unknown to fairy tale characters if they came to life. "In the real versions of fairy tales, there is very little of these types of Disney-nice actions. Rather there are behaviors of deceit, treachery, child abuse, punishment, rewards and swift justice. Fairy tales aren’t the politically correct or sanitized stories of animation. They’re hard-core, ’act right or else’ ultimatums in many cases. Children punished by death, people doomed to walk the earth as ghosts for stealing pennies and losing true love for minor infractions: these would be the behaviors fairy tale characters would expect to see in modern life."

The irony of a Disney movie parodying the contemporary understanding of fairy tales is especially fun for Sean Buvala. "The Brothers Grimm would not even recognize the Disney animated versions of ’Sleeping Beauty’ or ’Cinderella.’ In many ways, it seems that Disney made ’Enchanted’ to poke fun at the one-dimensional nature of fairy tale characters. However, those wide-eyed people in our imaginations are Disney’s own spawn. They must be having a fun time ’dis" Enchanting their own dragons."

Sean goes further in depth regarding fairy tales in modern life and examines the power a genuine storyteller has with a live audience in the latest podcast at Storyteller.net. The free-of-charge podcast can be found on the front-page of the website at www.storyteller.net or maybe be downloaded at www.storytellerpodcast.net.

Will Buvala be seeing the "Enchanted" Movie? "I’ll be in the Disneyland area next week. Maybe I’ll go see it right there in the Downtown Disney attraction," the nationally travelled storyteller says with a wicked grin.

Subscribe via email

Ebook & Coaching Kit

About Me

Sean has been engaged with storytelling and communication since
1986 and probably before that. He started his work by accidentally using active storytelling to
convert a classroom of slightly (but comically) homicidal 8th-grade
teenagers from angry kids to storytelling practitioners themselves. From
then on, both the kids and Sean were sold on the influence of a great
story.

From kids in classrooms to bosses in boardrooms, he has taught the art of storytelling to thousands of people since 1986. With the big jobs of creating workshops for some of the best-known companies to the intimate work of writing "how to" books for parents and fatherhood programs. Sean's deep immersion into the art of storytelling helps you communicate with great clarity.

Along with his many coaching and training duties, he is an author and accomplished performance storyteller adventuring across borders and ocean waves to share his stories and training. Sean is the director of one of the oldest and most diverse storytelling websites at Storyteller.net.

Recently released "Apples for the Princess: A Fairytale About Kindness and Honesty" in a children's book. Find it at Amazon.